A publishing house editor—his username is English Editor—posted the following question in the Forum several years ago:
“Which between the two questions below uses the correct structure?
“1. ‘If it could talk, what do you think
it would tell?’
“2. ‘If it could talk, what do you think
would it tell?’
“I’ve always thought that Sentence 1 is the ‘correct’ form of the question. I always edit the work of my authors that way whenever they use the structure in Sentence 2. But more often than not, they choose to retain their original question and ‘undo’ my edits. They always ask me for my grammar authority but I could not give them any. All I know is that my ‘style’ is grammatically correct because the second structure has two questions, which is like having a question within a question. Am I correct in my choice?”
Here’s my reply to English Editor:It is your first question that uses the grammatically correct structure: “If it could talk, what do you think
it would tell?”
That question is in the form of the so-called
second conditional sentence, which is used to denote unreal or improbable situations. Evidently, the use of the pronoun “it” in that sentence indicates that the subject is not a person but an animal, say a dolphin or a whale (both are known to be intelligent creatures), or perhaps an inanimate thing in the figurative sense, say a wall or a lamppost. In any case, that “it” actually couldn’t talk so the situation described in that sentence is unreal if not downright impossible. (I think the improbable use of the pronoun “it” for that “talking” subject is one other reason why the grammar and semantics of that sentence are rather slippery.)
We don’t ask: We don’t ask: Do you know where can I charge my cellphone? Do you have an idea why is she singing like that?As we know, a conditional sentence normally contains two clauses, the condition or premise (
protasis) and the consequence or conclusion (
apodosis). In the case of the conditional question you presented, the components are the following:
Condition or premise: “If it could talk”
Consequence or conclusion in the indicative mood: “it would tell (something)”
However, in the sentence at hand, this consequence is stated in two conflicting structures of the interrogative: “What do you think it would tell?” and “What do you think would it tell?”
Of course, the big question is why I think the first form above, “If it could talk, what do you think
it would tell?”, is grammatically correct and this second form preferred by your authors is incorrect: “If it could talk, what do you think
would it tell?”
The answer is simply this: in English, a question normally can’t be nested within another question. When a question is raised by using the interrogatives “what,” “who,” “why,” when,” “where,” or “how,” it becomes mandatory for it to be grammatically followed by the question’s premise in the form of an indicative statement. The correct question form is therefore “What do you think it would tell?” where the question “What do you think”” is followed by the indicative “it would tell.”
In contrast, in the form preferred by your authors, “What do you think
would it tell?”, the question “What do you think” is followed by another interrogative, “would it tell?”—a form that runs counter to the proper form for a question.
I realize that this explanation alone may be a hard to appreciate and accept, so I’m offering this other test to demonstrate which of the two forms of that conditional question is correct: reverse the order of the condition and the consequence in those questions.
Your version: “What do you think
it would tell if it could talk?”
Your authors’ version: “What do you think
would it tell if it could talk?”
This time I think it’s pretty clear that the first is not only the correct but also the better-sounding question.
This essay first appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the July 16, 2011 issue of The Manila Times
, © 2011 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
